e with me to the hither verge of life, and have sent his friendly
and hopeful accents far over on the other side, while I should be
treading the unknown path. Now, were I to send for him, he would
hardly come to my bedside, nor should I depart the easier for his
presence.

"You are not going to die, this time," said he, gravely smiling. "You
know nothing about sickness, and think your case a great deal more
desperate than it is."

"Death should take me while I am in the mood," replied I, with a little
of my customary levity.

"Have you nothing to do in life," asked Hollingsworth, "that you fancy
yourself so ready to leave it?"

"Nothing," answered I; "nothing that I know of, unless to make pretty
verses, and play a part, with Zenobia and the rest of the amateurs, in
our pastoral. It seems but an unsubstantial sort of business, as
viewed through a mist of fever. But, dear Hollingsworth, your own
vocation is evidently to be a priest, and to spend your days and nights
in helping your fellow creatures to draw peaceful dying breaths."

"And by which of my qualities," inquired he, "can you suppose me fitted
for this awful ministry?"

"By your tenderness," I said. "It seems to me the reflection of God's
own love."

"And you call me tender!" repeated Hollingsworth thoughtfully. "I
should rather say that the most marked trait in my character is an
inflexible severity of purpose. Mortal man has no right to be so
inflexible as it is my nature and necessity to be."

"I do not believe it," I replied.

But, in due time, I remembered what he said.

Probably, as Hollingsworth suggested, my disorder was never so serious
as, in my ignorance of such matters, I was inclined to consider it.
After so much tragical preparation, it was positively rather mortifying
to find myself on the mending hand.

All the other members of the Community showed me kindness, according to
the full measure of their capacity. Zenobia brought me my gruel every
day, made by her own hands (not very skilfully, if the truth must be
told), and, whenever I seemed inclined to converse, would sit by my
bedside, and talk with so much vivacity as to add several gratuitous
throbs to my pulse. Her poor little stories and tracts never half did
justice to her intellect. It was only the lack of a fitter avenue that
drove her to seek development in literature. She was made (among a
thousand other things that she might have been) for a stump oratress.
I re